Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Cleveland Post Mortem IV: Rainman

My first assignment on Tuesday was Bethany Christian.  “Who’s she?,” I asked the unsmiling volunteer coordinator.  He just pointed me toward an elderly man about to stuff a sandwich into his mouth.  “He’s your driver,” I was told.  “Give him this.” I was handed some mapquest directions and with them I interruped an old man’s lunch.  He drove me quite a distance, it seemed, into a well-maintained but obviously impecunious neighborhood; the polling place was in a church on Martin Luther King street.  As we pulled up I noticed that the small parking lot was crammed, cars were threading in and out of the narrow drive, and there at that chokepoint between parking and street, between voting and the outside world, several election volunteers stood huddled against the cool breezes and steady drizzly rain.  There were clearly two species: a few Kerry supporters who distributed democratic slate guides, and several local proposition 112 supporters (to raise the sales tax for increased school funding) who seemed to know most of the people who came by to vote by name, nickname, and employment history. 

The Kerry supporters seemed to be in their early 20s, just out of college, earnest and articulate, friendly to a fault… there was a young man and a young woman who seemed to be good friends but not married (to each other); he was african-american but seemed out of his element in this neighborhood, she was a perky zoftig pastry chef, and very white.  The other Kerry supporter was an over-earnest young white man with big ideas about instituting his own form of barter to compete with the dollar, and who seemed like a serious political junkie; he wanted to join every conversation he heard and for most of the day had a serious hanging boogerchad in his nose. 

On the other hand, the 112 guys were a fun crowd - men and women in their 20s and 30s and a couple of guys who seemed to be in their 50s, who brought maturity and patience to the event.  They all were goofing on each other and having a fine old time together (except for one very lovely young woman who stood by herself at the edge of the driveway and who never seemed to utter a word or acknowledge any of the others, just handing out literature and looking as if she were aching inside).  They all wore sensible waterproof jackets and shoes and stood under umbrellas; occasionally they’d take a break in a big ol’ conversion van one of them had brought up alongside us with the door slid open so we could hear the soulful r&b sounds of democracy in action. 

The whole group of us moved around the small area where we were allowed to congregate, circulating and chatting, sharing the laughs when they were available, soaking up the rain when there was nothing else to do.  And I did a lot of that.  I was wearing a hydrophilic down coat, a nice business shirt with a classy silk necktie, suit pants, court-appearance shoes (as if, but just in case), a black smock that said YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE, and a hat knit for me by Amy Choppa.  In the steady drizzle the hat and jacket, being, essentially, wearable sponges, quickly became waterlogged, absorbing vast quantities of cold rain.My shoes filled up with water till I could feel my toes wrinkling into raisins inside of them.  Around 4 in the afternoon someone gave me a disposible plastic poncho and a soggy sandwich; it was like wearing a dry-cleaning bag and eating a sandwich in the shower, but I was grateful for them both.  Around 5 some additional EP volunteers were sent over to my station; I called HQ to make sure that I was where I was supposed to be.  They told me they’d send me to a ‘hot spot’ but it turned out to be no warmer than that first place had been.  It was full of people voting, and other people outside making sure.  They stood in the rain, and I joined them.

I was aware of absolutely no incidents or shenanigans at the polling places I monitored during my watch, thanks no doubt primarily to my prophylactic presence as I stood around in the rain and made sure that as many people as I could check had been able to vote without challenge or difficulty.  The winds blew and the drizzle drizzled and we congregated in parking lots in our wet clothes and our cheap tacky ponchos, laughing and observing and imagining a future we’d have helped to shape and encouraging each other and all who passed before us that the democratic process was alive and well.  We were aware of the dark skies, the gusting wind, the sheets of chilly rain.  How could we not be?  They surrounded us, clothed us in coldness.  Regardless, we laughed and cheered each other on, and we stayed warm enough.